Structure of narrative can be broken - the old traditional now post traditional
How far does our thriller use traditional ideas of narrative
Traditional = modernism
Post modern - challenges/breaks down structures
Narrative is just a concept
The traditional narrative theory is that the film has a beginning, middle and end. However, more recently, films have been going against this and challenge the idea of modernism, often by putting the end at the beginning of a film. There are various theorists that also have ideas about narratives theories, however not all films conform to this. From looking at my thriller and narrative theorists our thriller conforms to the theories and is more of a traditional thriller than a post modern thriller.
Tzetvan Todorov has the theory that narratives have a sequence of equilibrium, disequilibrium and restoration. My thriller conforms to this theory. In my thriller you can see the state of equilibrium where the main character is calming walking along and is alone and appears safe. The state of disequilibrium becomes clear when the thugs and our main character break out into a fight, the restoration is then shown when our main character wakes up, brushes himself down and starts calmly walking away. The state of restoration is also clear as the antagonists are also gone. Pam Cook is another theorist that has a theory that narratives are in a fictional world yet they contain verisimilitude. My thriller also conforms to this theory as also it is a fictional story line however, the story line can been seen as realistic and something which may happen in real life, with the idea of MI5. Pam Cook also has the theory that narratives have some form of cause and effect in the them. My thriller also has this; the envelope is the cause of conflict between our agent and the thugs, with the effect of this being the fight which breaks out. A third narrative theorist is Claude Levi-Strauss and his theory is that in a narrative there is binary opposition. This means that there is contrast between the good and bad, and my thriller has that contrast between the two. The contrast between the good and bad in my thriller is shown as the protagonist is put in a fight against multiple antagonists, showing that they have prepared for this and they want to hurt him. This conforms to Claude's idea that there is no in between of right and wrong, good and bad. Vladimir Propp has the theory that a narrative has one of various types of characters. My thriller includes three of these characters which are hero, villain and dispatcher. The hero in my thriller is our main character who is the MI5 agent; he has a similar character to James Bond who is the hero within his films. The villains are the group of thugs who start the fight and are almost seeking our hero. The dispatcher is the mysterious woman as she takes the envelope from the hero and then sends him on his way; from what I made for my thriller it is not clear whether she is good or bad. Therefore, my thriller does strongly conform to multiple narrative theorists theories.
However, there are some ways in which my thriller does conform to theories of narrative theorists. Kate Domaille theory is that narratives have a clear narrative type, however the type of my narrative is not clear. You could say that my narrative is 'circe' as there is a victim against the villain, however the victim against the villains in my narrative is really a hero, rather than a victim. As he is such a strong character it is not clear that he is really a victim and that he may have done something in the past to annoy these people which has caused the fight; he may have also stolen the envelope from them which is why they are after him.
Also, relating back to the theory of Vladimir Propp, although my characters do have the personalities of hero, villain and dispatcher, these personalities have not been confirmed in the title sequence and therefore this may have misled the audience. Therefore it is clear that my thriller does not conform to all narrative theories.
In conclusion, my thriller conforms to narrative theories more than it does not conform to them. My thriller has the beginning, middle and end sequence which is the traditional way to lay out a narrative. I have given it this sequence rather than put the end at the beginning as in a thriller there is often a twist near the middle or end, so to put the end at the start of the film will spoil the twist. It was also the first film I had made so to make it to the best I could I followed a simpler way to make it at more of a basic level. I also used a lot of the theories as this makes it clearer it is a thriller and entices the audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment